Used oil filters are salvaged for purpose of recycling the residue oil and the metal. Various presses have been proposed for compressing such used oil filters into compact brick shaped bundles or bales. U.S. Pat. No. 5,007,337 discloses a waste material baler having a reciprocable main compression plunger functioning to compress waste material and an ejection plunger for removing the compressed bale from the compression chamber. U.S. Pat. No. 5,203,261 discloses a can baling machine having a vertical loading chute, a horizontally reciprocatable auxiliary plunger and a horizontally reciprocatable main plunger disposed at a right angle to the auxiliary plunger. The cans pre-pressed by the auxiliary plunger are sheared by the main plunger creating metal fragments which must be carefully filtered from the oil salvaged in an oil filter recycling operation. Previously designed oil filter presses have not made adequate provisions for problems that occur due to oversize foreign objects and materials that cannot be sheared, which are mistakenly mixed with used oil filters. In a continuously operating oil filter press facility the used oil filters are normally dumped into the feed hopper and fed into a compression chamber without thorough inspection for foreign objects. Thus foreign items, such as various used automotive components, may be fed without detection into the oil filter press. Removal of oversize foreign components from a jammed press is typically difficult and time consuming.